US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Monday said that the US economy still has far to go to recover to an acceptable state of health.
“Today the economy is significantly stronger than it was four years ago, although conditions are clearly still far from where we would all like them to be,” he said.
The statement, made in a speech on banking in Stone Mountain, Georgia, came as economists and investors seek signs on whether the US central bank is ready to tighten up its easy money policy aimed at holding long-term interest rates down.
Since December last year, the Fed has stuck to its ultra-low rates and its US$85 billion per month quantitative easing bond-purchase program, despite economic indicators that led many to believe the economy is picking up speed.
Bernanke has consistently tied the tightening of monetary policy to a substantial improvement in unemployment, with the rate currently 7.6 percent, and his statement echoed comments made in previous months that he was not satisfied with the pace of recovery.
On Friday, the US Department of Labor reported that just 88,000 new jobs were generated last month, the slowest growth in nine months and well below the level needed just to keep the current jobless rate steady, much less lower it.
Despite some discussion in the Federal Open Market Committee’s January meeting that the quantitative easing program is increasingly risky for monetary management, Bernanke said most committee members had agreed that the bond purchases “continue to provide meaningful support to economic growth and job creation.”
“It’s very, very important that we act to address unemployment,” he said.
Separately, Alcoa Inc started off the US earnings season with a bang on Monday by reporting a larger first-quarter profit than analysts expected, helped by strong demand for aluminum used to make airplanes and automobiles.
Alcoa is the first company in the Dow Jones Industrial Average to report first-quarter results. Because its products wind up in so many things, from cars and buildings to soda cans, investors study Alcoa’s results for hints about earnings at companies in other industries.
Alcoa said net income in the first quarter was US$149 million, or US$0.13 per share, compared with the US$94 million, or US$0.09 per share, recorded a year earlier.
Revenue fell to US$5.83 billion from US$6.01 billion a year earlier and was below the US$5.91 billion that analysts predicted. Alcoa attributed this to lower aluminum prices and curtailed production in its European primary metals business.
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) yesterday announced the launch of the TSMC-UTokyo Lab to promote advanced semiconductor research, education and talent development. The lab is TSMC’s first laboratory collaboration with a university outside Taiwan, the company said in a statement. The lab would leverage “the extensive knowledge, experience, and creativity” of both institutions, the company said. It is located in the Asano Section of UTokyo’s Hongo, Tokyo, campus and would be managed by UTokyo faculty, guided by directors from UTokyo and TSMC, the company said. TSMC began working with UTokyo in 2019, resulting in 21 research projects,
Taiwan’s property market is entering a freeze, with mortgage activity across the nation’s six largest cities plummeting in the first quarter, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said yesterday, citing mounting pressure on housing demand amid tighter lending rules and regulatory curbs. Mortgage applications in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung totaled 28,078 from January to March, a sharp 36.3 percent decline from 44,082 in the same period last year, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by franchise said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC, 聯徵中心). “The simultaneous decline across all six cities reflects just how drastically the market
RSS